Even though the Windows 7 beta had been available on piracy networks for a while now, it still hadn't been officially released. During his pre-show keynote at CES, Steve Ballmer officially launched the Windows 7 beta onto the world via TechNet, MSDN, and Connect. It will become available to the general public this Friday.

windows 7 is indeed SLOWER than xp (less FPS). So, all this hype about great performance from win7 is BS.

It's a BETA! Windows 7 final doesn't exist yet! Just insert 'beta' after windows 7 in your sentence and I'd have no disagreement. You speak like Windows 7 is final and you hold the holy grail of truth that W7 is indeed slower but it's a BETA product.